Initial thoughts...

[Adoede]

I certainly understand what Cynaidh is saying...and let's be honest, the reduced activity in the forums lately indicates he's not the only one less engaged these days.

The slower pace doesn't bother me so much because I have so many guys in blood gods to keep me entertained while my newbies are developing. But I can see how a team with no maxed glads would feel like an awfully slow grind. If Nate wants to speed leveling up, that's fine by me. Speeding up gearing too would be "A-okay" with me as well. And while we're at it, let me just chime in that it would be nice if the incentives for performing well in the seasons were a bit more "incentivizing". I, for one, think the prizes for the blood games are waaay better than the prizes for seasons. Maybe merge the two together? So a top-1% win in seasons counts as a 1st place finish towards the blood games achievements? Etc... As it is now, once you've got the extra HOL prize, there's nothing to shoot for in seasons anymore...other than pride for a day before the next season starts.

As for the gear issue - Nate has said before that lvl 55 gear might not always be the best for your build design. Something I've been doing casually is keeping track of armor pieces with the boosts I like from each different level of gear (I refresh blacksmith everyday to look through the inventory in case anything catches my eye - so I can know to look for it at the end of the season). And let me say that, for example, if I wanted to maximize stamina and block on my build - some of the best gear for that is lvl 52 and some others are lvl 53 or 54. Maybe one piece is lvl 55. So if you plan your gear purchases well, you should be gearing up well through levels 52-55.

Cynaidh, if helping you gear up even while you're in the 50-55 level grind will help keep you in the game, PM me about what you are trying to accomplish with your gear design and I'll see if I happen to have any of those pieces on my "wishlist" to share with you.

[Team Kaos]

I understand the lulls of going from 50-55, but Zynaith also, rocketed up the ranks in a pretty absurd fashion. As of today there are only 3 Shadows in Primus one of them being another of Cyn's. The majority of Shadows that started up around the same time are working through Maximus still. I know everyone wants to level up as fast as they can, but in my mind whats the fun of any game if i can blast my way all the way to 55 in just a few weeks especially in a game like this.
It would cheapen the upper brackets of Primus and Blood Gods and especially the Blood Games in those brackets. It's supposed to be hard to attain those brackets not to just be able to run full throttle and go from 1 to 55 in a month. If that was the deal then Blood Gods and HOL would be meaningless because everyone would do it and do it very often.

Thats my 2 cents.